


if compassion be the breath of life, breathe on me

by Victoryindeath2



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben Solo is dumb sometimes, Ben Solo loves his mom, Bendemption is here, Chewie is the best uncle, Episode IX AU I guess, F/M, Force Ghost Han, Gift Fic, Healing Love, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I have a lot of feelings about Ben Solo, Maria I hope this is the fic you deserve, Post-Canon, Redeemed Ben Solo, Reylo - Freeform, Warning: hugs ahead, also Han and Leia may not have been perfect parents, and they are trying their damnedest to help him now, birthday fic for Maria, but that's okay because he's pretty and Rey loves him anyway, but they hella love their son, domestic Reylo is my new favorite thing, don't ever let Ben do your laundry, implied Finn/Rose, in this fic we stan foregiveness mercy and grace and of course love, my very own Episode IX
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 05:02:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16298636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Victoryindeath2/pseuds/Victoryindeath2
Summary: "Eventually you will come to the understanding that love heals everything, and love is all there is." - Gary ZukavBen doesn't turn from darkness when Rey asks him to.  He makes the decision on his own, because he is utterly broken, and he just wants to hug his mother.  A gentle tale of repentance and forgiveness, with a helping of domestic Reylo.  In a galaxy far, far away, compassion is best defined as unconditional love.





	if compassion be the breath of life, breathe on me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MJosephine10](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MJosephine10/gifts).



 

  _So let our hearts bridge the gap of your_

_Ever-echoing fear_

_I place a candle at the window and lie down_

_To dreamless sleep_

_For I know somewhere you’re walking to me--_

_Because you have a promise to keep_

~from “Waiting Room” by Eden, aka tumblr user @soreylohuh

 

When Ben Solo turns traitor for the last time, he does not do it for Rey. 

He loves her, would die for her, has killed for her—but he does not turn for her.  Not specifically.  But maybe he turns _because_ of her.

He turns because she saw him kill Han Solo, his father, and because she once hated him with so much fury he can still feel the scorch of her early gaze across his soul.  It cut ten times deeper than the scar on his face.  Yes, Rey saw him at his most despicable, but defying all things she thought he was worth understanding.  Worth comfort, forgiveness, even saving. 

Ben owes Rey so much, owes her the idea that he is not forever lost, forever alone, but she is not the one he hurt most. 

Ben Solo does not turn for the sake of the woman he loves.

He turns for the sake of the woman whose husband he killed.

Ben wants to see his mother.

_(me too, kid, but I promised her I would save you, and I meant to bring you back so she could wrap her arms around your bony shoulders...I won’t back out of that deal, not even now, especially not now)_

-

When Ben Solo turns traitor for the last time, the First Order shatters like an ornate chandelier, and the remnants—glass shards, power-hungry officials almost as vicious as the vanished Hux—find the resources to offer a reward for Ben’s death. 

Ben is jumping through hyperspace in his TIE Silencer when he receives an anonymous transmission detailing the wanted notice.  He comprehends the message, but isn’t in any shape to wonder about the messenger.  He hasn’t slept in two days, and his eyes are red and bloody from near constant weeping. 

He runs clammy hands through his hair, and wonders if pressing his palms against his temples will enable him to forget he has nowhere to go.

Will enable him to forget that he knows no action will ever fully compensate for his sins.

Ben can’t expect or even beg for forgiveness.  Wouldn’t beg anyway.  Begging never got him anywhere—not as Snoke’s protégé, not as Snoke’s destroyer—he is alone, and anything he wants must be attained by fighting.

(he is so tired of fighting)

His mother is with the Resistance, and the Resistance only wants him dead, and his mother always chooses the greater good.  What is a son to a galaxy?

_Geez, kid, did we really screw you up that badly?_

If Ben closes his eyes, leans his head to the side, against the glass of his Silencer, the softly vibrating glass shakes up the night-dark memories of his early years, and he can almost feel his mom’s heartbeat as she rocks his tiny body back and forth, humming some not-yet-lost Alderaanian lullaby, smoothing sweaty hair from his forehead as he burns from some inexplicable fever.  She has come back early from a late-Senate session, or maybe one of the early meetings of the Resistance movement, just because Han sent her a desperate message.  

In the morning she will be gone, back to work as usual, but Han will be there still, and Ben, his fever having vanished overnight, will settle into Han’s still awkward arms as though Han were the softest pillow imaginable.  Ben will bury his face in his dad’s jacket, the jacket that always smells of the _Millenium Falcon_ , of oils and smuggled spices and laser fire.

Something hot and wet runs down Ben’s cheek, and he sits up abruptly, opening his eyes.  He doesn’t know why this memory and others like it have haunted him for the past few days.  The past week, really.  It was like slicing Snoke in two had bisected and destroyed some smothering black curtain that had blocked him off from his happier memories.

(If Ben is honest, some of the memories had already begun to slip in through the cracks of his skin, had already begun to soak into his veins and arteries.  Snoke made a fatal miscalculation ordering Kylo Ren to kill Han, because Ben was and always will be a Solo at heart.  And to be a Solo means many things, but nothing was or is more intrinsically Solo than sacrificing oneself for the people you love...even if that entails suffering and death) 

_You’re sacrificing yourself now, kid.  I think you’ve been sacrificing yourself all your life, trying to be the son you thought me and your mom wanted, the student you thought Luke wanted, and finally the protégé you thought Snoke wanted.  Because you loved us, whether we deserved it or not, and you wanted us to love you and look on you with pride_

_I g_ _uess I messed up, because I thought you knew how much I loved you.  Will you listen if I tell you now?  Will you believe me?_

-

Ben runs out of fuel in the middle of the galaxy, a good parsec away from any planet, and he thinks he will die alone, without killing or being killed, and he is almost content with such a death.  It would be far better than he deserves, which is why, of course, it doesn’t happen that way.

A Resistance ship, a former Imperial Star Destroyer, drops out of hyperspace and almost lands right on top of his Silencer.  Ben has no way to escape, nowhere to hide, and he is taken aboard to much rejoicing. 

Most people have heard the rumors by now, rumors of who Kylo Ren is and what he has done.  Betrayed the New Republic, the Resistance, his family and his legacy, his uncle and the very students he lived with and trained with.  Fought as a loyal servant to Snoke and killed innocents along the way. 

He is so weary that he doesn’t resist when they pull him out of his ship, when they secure his wrists and ankles in vibro-cuffs, and he experiences only mild shock when, in listing his crimes to his face, they make no mention of patricide. 

  _Leia kept secret the fact Vader—Anakin Skywalker—was her father for years, and yeah it wasn’t quite possible to keep_ your _identity secret, but she sure as hell isn’t going to spread around the fact you let a tiff with your old man go a little too far.  We want to save you, kid, not destroy you_

Ben ignores the Star Destroyer’s commander and his questions, and only half listens to some frantic underling offering suggestions of the nearest planet with ysalamiri.  They are afraid to have him on board their ship, with access to the Force.  They don’t know he is the one behind the First Order’s fall, the smuggled codes and transmissions.  They don’t understand why the scraps of that organization are targeting him with a price on his head. 

Hell, they don’t have any idea that he was the one who killed Snoke a week ago.  Of course they don’t.  Why should they know?  Why should they care?

When someone sticks Ben’s bicep with a sharp needle, he sighs and allows himself to be swept into unconsciousness. 

-

Ben’s cell is grey, space-cold and roughly as welcoming as his First Order living quarters.  If he can quiet his breathing, he can hear a low humming sound, some sort of shield on the other side of his prison door. 

His outer cloak has been taken from him, and his belt and boots, and he still wears the vibro-cuffs.  The Resistance is not taking any chances with him.  He wonders if they have found his lightsaber, hidden away in a secret compartment in his Silencer.  There are bruises up and down his arms, sickly purple and yellow.  His captors had not been gentle dragging him to his cell, and he thinks someone kicked him in the ribs.  Something twinges when he twists his torso.  He feels sore, thirsty, and starved.

He deserves nothing less, and much more.

Not for the first time, he wishes he could see his mother.  She doesn’t even need to forgive him, but he wants to say he is sorry.  He wants her to see his pale skin and lifeless eyes and shattered lips, lips that don’t know what sounds to form anymore.  He wants her to know that he has enough of a soul left that he can suffer all deserved regret, torture, and shame for killing Han.  Her husband.  His father. 

Maybe that isn’t helpful.  Maybe that is just his melted mind grasping at the idea that there is something halfway good about him. 

(maybe he just desperately wants his mother to hug him, like she used to hug him when he would stay shut up in his room all day after a playmate teased him about his big ears, when he spilled calligraphy ink all over one of her white ceremonial gowns, when he accidentally used the Force and shattered a commlink when she was in the middle of a row with Han)

Ben rolls off his cot, carefully sinks to the cold floor.  The durasteel freezes his feet, seeps through his clothes, and centers Ben enough that he remembers why his mother shouldn’t come for him now, won’t come for him now.  

Ben Solo is far from the greater good, let alone the good.  His mother should stay far away.

Like Rey.

 _oh...kid_

-

He hasn’t spoken to Rey since the throne room, hasn’t seen her since Crait.  He doesn’t want to consider her opinion of him now.  Or he does, but his head is so unclear.

_Your head, your heart, it’s all the same for us Solos...the latter is gonna rule the former every damn time.  Or at least it always has for you, and almost always for me.  Your mom has hers pretty balanced...usually_

Ben waits forever on his cell floor (waits for what?), pulling his long legs against his torso, crushing them into his chest with his arms.  He has always been lonely, and this wretchedness should be nothing new, should be something he can ignore, but he starts to remember a flickering fire, and a slender hand stretching out toward him, a steady hand, freely offered.  Rey’s hand was rough and warm and _real_ when he, shaking, touched it. 

He tries to tell himself doesn’t matter what Rey would say about his future, about what he could be—it doesn’t matter—because she closed the door on him, and Ben has just enough wisdom left (like he had any ever) to restrain himself from wrapping his massive hands around the door frame and pulling the whole thing down atop his crushed heart.

She closed the door, only she should reopen it.  If she wants to.

(Oh Force, how he wants her to.)

Something shudders in his chest, and he clenches his hands together.  He is shivering, his very bones are trembling, and he feels wetness on his cheek.  Tears. 

They are not his.

Ben leaps to his feet.

The grey walls fade away like campfire smoke vanishing the early morning, and there she stands.

Rey is alone in some sort of training room.  She has no lightsaber anymore, but the staff in her hand almost sizzles as she swipes it through the air.  Ben chokes at the sight of her, and she twists sharply, almost tripping when her sweaty, bare feet stick to the dark blue mat underneath her.

“Ben!” she says, and she steps forward, dropping her staff.  It hits the mat soundlessly, and Ben does not notice if it lays still or rolls away.

His eyes are fixed on Rey.  She has indeed been crying—her eyes are puffy, her nose swollen, and she wipes her face with a sleeve that already looks drenched in sweat.  She jerks her head in a strange little shake.

He almost says her name, almost, but it is too sacred right now.  If he says “Rey” he will destroy the vision, break the Force connection, wake up from the burnt-orange dream.  He doesn’t know why the dream is that color, except that Rey is always warm as the sun.  Sometimes a blazing fury, sometimes a gentle, healing beam.  But always the most real thing in the entire galaxy.

Rey is not, never was, never could be duplicitous.  He _knows_ her, even as he questions her, and he is an utter fool to have entertained the idea that she would abandon him indefinitely. 

“You re-opened the Force bond,” he manages to say.  To stammer, more accurately.  He can’t tell if the tears on his face is his or hers.  “When?  Why?”

Rey sighs deeply, heaving her shoulders, and for an instant Ben thinks she is still (rightfully) angry with him, but the next moment her dark eyes meet his, and he sees the relief and the smile in them even before the corners of her lips turn up. 

“I opened the door for you the very day after you killed Snoke,” Rey says, “and I have terrible dreams every night that you have been hurt or mortally wounded.  Why haven’t you looked for me?”

She steps closer, so that if she held out her hand again (why does her hand mean everything to him), he could take it and kiss it and hold it as though it would heal everything wrong in the galaxy. 

“I’m sorry I shut off our connection,” Rey continues, and Ben shakes his head, because why is she apologizing for that? 

“You were right to do so.”  Ben can’t take his eyes off Rey’s face, but he wants to make himself smaller for her, to show his respect and penitence, and if she would accept it, the strange devotion he feels.

Ben kneels.  “I was utterly in the wrong,” he says.  “I was afraid—I am afraid—because I am lost, and I can’t stand the thought of being alone, of not being with you.  But I should never have asked you to leave the friends you have made.  Who have given you belonging, and a home.  I am...sorry.” 

For a moment Ben pauses, because some wounds take a while to heal, but Ben never shrinks from pain if he believes it will help him, so he carries on. 

“The deserter from the First Order—”

“Finn,” Rey says, and her tone borders on sharp.  Her face turns slightly grave.  “His name is Finn.  The first member of my new family, if you will, though not the last.” 

Ben does not flinch, though something in his heart clenches. 

_Son, you have gotta let go of your resentment.  First, because you’re making me spout Jedi nonsense like let go of your resentment, and second, because Big Deal is a good kid and a good friend to Rey, the very best.  And it looks like he’s got a girl of his own.  So calm down and full lightspeed ahead_

Ben says, “I’m sorry.” He isn’t sure what he is apologizing for this time, whether it is the rage he displayed towards Finn, the injury he did to him, or the way he hurt Rey when he hurt Finn.  Maybe all of those things. 

Maybe Rey understands what he is trying to say better than he does himself.  She is smiling again.  Her hair, damp from sweat, is frizzing around her face.

“You can stand up, you know,” she says.  “I don’t need anybody kneeling to me.  I thought I had made that clear when I refused to join you at the head of your new order.  How is that new order going anyway?” 

It is this moment when Ben smiles for the first time. 

(something is swelled up in his throat, and he can barely swallow, and his smile is more of a smirk, but he feels light, as he hasn’t felt in years)

“My new order,” he says almost cheerfully.  “Ah yes.  Doomed to inevitable failure before it even began.  I’ve had to abandon the project.”

Rey does laugh then, and though Ben thinks he has forgotten how, he joins her, faintly.  She rests her hand on his shoulder, and he stands, so close he could kiss her.  But he doesn’t because all merriment flees from her face, and she stares down at his vibro-cuffs.  She must have missed them before.

“Where are you?” Rey demands. “Who is holding you prisoner?”  Fear slashes through the notes of her tone, and Ben is so taken aback he hesitates before answering.

“I am not in danger,” he says, trying to reassure himself as much as Rey.  “I am aboard a Resistance ship, and I believe they are taking me somewhere safe and secure.  I was—”

“I haven’t heard about this,” Rey interrupts, and her eyes flash with the same steel that rules her voice.  She reaches back with one hand, and calls her staff to her.  “Stay put,” she commands.  “I have to look into this.”

Ben is a little delirious, partially from hunger and thirst, partially from seeing and speaking with Rey, and finding she is not furious with him.  But before he can raise his eyebrow and inquire as to where exactly she expects he might go, Rey nods to someone behind him. 

Someone in the same training room.  Ben twists, surprised, but he freezes when he sees who it is.

Finn. 

Ben quells the urge to call him traitor, to call him anything other than his name, Finn, because names are so important, and right about now he would die if Rey called him anything other than Ben. 

So he shuts his mouth, says nothing.  He just bows his head, briefly.

Finn, who must have witnessed the whole conversation, or at least Rey’s side, depending on how Force bond visions work, just narrows his eyes. 

“We’ll find you,” Rey says.  “Just be patient and hold on.  I’ll tell Leia, and she’ll move planets from one end of the galaxy to another just to save you.  She misses you so much.”

And Rey brushes Ben’s arm as she rushes by him, and Ben leans into her and after her.  She smells of salt water and—and yes, of oil and spices and laser fire.  She must be spending a lot of time on the _Millenium Falcon_.

In a lapse of self-indulgence, Ben imagines her flying to his rescue, perhaps with Chewie at her side.  He’d give anything to see the giant furball again, even if said furball choked him to death the moment after.

Ben didn’t dare picture his mother aboard the _Millenium Falcon_.  He might start weeping again.

Rey slips out of the room, and as she does, Finn shrugs in Ben’s general direction, though it seems to Ben that Finn can’t see him. 

“You and me, we’ve got a lot to discuss,” Finn says.  His hand rests on the grip of the Z6 riot baton that hangs on his belt.  “But another time.  You, ah, hang tight.”

Rey and Finn and the training room vanish, and Ben returns to the reality of his cell.  It is colder than ever.

_See, kid?  Told you Big Deal was a good guy.  You really need to start listening to your old man_

-

Three weeks have passed, and Ben is hiding away with Rey on some young and green planet in the outer rim of the Outer Rim.  Twenty-six hours after they had spoken to each other through the Force, Rey had stormed the ex-Imperial Star Destroyer Ben was imprisoned on and practically dragged him to the _Millenium Falcon_ herself. 

Stormed, because even when presented with the signed authorization of General Leia Organa, the Star Destoyer’s commander was reluctant to release the fearsome Kylo Ren from his custody.

Dragged, because Ben was barely conscious, burning with fever and starvation, and there were damned ysalamiri everywhere on the ship, so Rey couldn’t use the Force to levitate him.  But Finn was with her, and Chewie offered to tear the commander’s arms off if he couldn’t find a way to comply with their official request, so all in all things went very well. 

And after the initial rescue, Chewie had piloted the _Falcon_ as far from New Republic territory as possible, followed by Finn in Ben’s TIE Silencer.  They found an unnamed, green and growing planet, nigh uninhabited by intelligent creatures, and they built a little house there so Rey could devote herself to nursing Ben back to health. 

It is now time for Chewie and Finn to return to New Republic territory.  Finn has high rank in the Resistance these days, and even with a merely semi-sanctioned disappearance, they will be glad of his return.  For his part, Chewie wants to reassure Leia in person that her son is saved and safe.  It would not be wise to impart that information over distant communication.

Ben has sat and talked long with Chewie frequently over the past few weeks, and every time he leaves the conversation feeling utterly astounded at the Wookie’s patience and compassion.  Han had been Chewbacca’s best friend for decades, they were brothers in the deepest sense of the word, and by right the Wookie should hate Ben for the rest of eternity. 

Ben does not understand how Chewie can love him so consistently. 

Chewie rumbles that Ben was and is his nephew, his son, his heart and life blood, and Ben better never forget that again, and should always ask Chewie for aid if he feels lonely, betrayed, misunderstood, or any other emotion stoked for years by Snoke.  And then Chewie apologizes for shooting him. 

Ben is unashamed to cry quietly into the Wookie’s furry coat, and Chewie, allowing a few giant tears to splash unrepentantly upon Ben’s dark hair, promises to return soon.

Ben’s farewell to Finn is not nearly as emotionally charged.  The two men have had that talk Finn promised to conduct, and though they are nothing like friends, they are not so much enemies as allies.  

The ex-stormtrooper forgets grudges more easily than Ben, who still hasn’t had the courage to sort out his feelings about Luke Skywalker, and Ben admits to himself that he envies Finn’s ease and his ability to shrug off the hurt of the past in hope for the future.

(that ease and optimism were hard won, and Ben knows it, but if he admits _that_ then he just might think he can attain such things himself, and he can’t let himself hope...he’s tired of wishing for impossibilities)

Finn only has one thing to say to Ben before he steps aboard the _Millenium Falcon_ :  “Break Rey’s heart, and I’ll break your face.” 

Finn grins, but there is something serious in his eye, and Ben acknowledges Finn’s promise with a solemn nod. 

Secretly, both of them know that Rey is quite capable of scarring the other side of Ben’s face should he fall into darkness again.

-

Ben and Rey haven’t exactly talked about the future.  It is a vision before them not Force-bond-clear, but colorful with the warmth of a red evening sun, and the cool peace of ocean blue. 

They live in, of all things, a treehouse.  It is similar to Chewie’s old home from many years ago, back on his home planet of Kashyyk, though they have adapted it to be more suitable for human use.  

The trees around them are tall, they live near a crystal-clear stream that runs from the forest behind them down into the rolling fields of wild grain that stretch for miles before running into purple mountains far off on the horizon. 

Ben likes to take his calligraphy set and walk down in the early morning to a soft grassy area on the east side of the stream.  Weather permitting, he sits there for hours, copying things from memory.  Never Jedi texts, or anything that bears the scent of the Sith, or Snoke, but favorite stories from his childhood, recipes for the sweet Alderaanian treats that he used to make with his mom on the rare occasions she had time for baking, and ship manuals that he used to read aloud to his dad while he was tinkering on the _Millenium Falcon_. 

Rey is amazed at the capacity of his memory.

“How do you recall all of that?” she asks him one day.  “You haven’t read any of those things in years.  And I couldn’t copy from memory if it was something you told me yesterday.”

Ben smiles, shrugging.  “Always been like this.  Mom used to call it a gift I had.  And...and my dad would just get frustrated when I was always right about what the manuals had said.”

Some mornings Rey joins Ben, curling up on a blanket beside him.  Occasionally, she practices reading and writing, because honestly she isn’t that good at it.  More frequently, she pesters Ben to tell her the childhood tales he grew up with, or of the far off planets he has been too.  She makes him promise to take her to those planets one day, and he agrees even though he has no idea if he will ever safely be able to leave their current home.

One day, Rey surprises him by taking out a knife and finding wood to whittle.  She creates an exact replica of one of the creatures in a story he is telling her, and every day after that she makes another one.  Sometimes he draws them so she can have a model.

Their treehouse becomes cluttered with tiny humans, bipeds, quadrupeds, and creatures of every other leg quantity.  She whittles porgs, because they make her think of Chewie, and she also forms BB-8, because she misses the sunny little droid, but her favorite thing to whittle is the fuzzy, sweet, violent little creature that Ben tells her is an Ewok. 

It’s just adorable, and Rey thinks she would like to hug one in real life, and Ben roars with laughter when she tells him this.  It is the first full laugh she has ever heard from him, and for a moment she forgets her own name and the time of day and every fear she has ever had of abandonment or loneliness, and she laughs and leans over his calligraphy set, spilling his ink, completely ruining their woven blanket, and she hugs him and presses her cheek on his broad shoulder.

Ben’s laugh quiets, he hesitates, but Rey doesn’t move, and slowly he brings his arms around her, and when she still doesn’t move, but continues to breathe softly so that the warm air from her lungs tickles his skin, he leans down and kisses her soft brown hair.

They stay like that for a long time.

-

They don’t spend all their time sitting by in idyllic bliss.  Some days they work in their little garden, or one of them (Rey, usually) will go hunting for some small creature to place on the dinner table. 

They often spar together, in the morning, in the afternoon, in the early evening.  They only have one lightsaber between them, Ben’s, so Rey carves wooden swords and staffs, and Ben teaches her various forms, and she helps him be more cautious in his fighting style.

“You’re very wild,” she says to him one day, as he swings his red lightsaber about.  It still sounds like a very unhealthy lightsaber, but the crackling is not so loud, and perhaps it is Rey’s imagination, but the color has taken on a distinctly violet tint. 

Ben retorts back that Rey’s style of fighting is little less wild than his own, and Rey snorts. 

“Not my fault.  I think the Force bond has somehow copied knowledge of your ridiculous flairs, spins, and twirls and uploaded it to my brain.  Like a Holo file.  So if you fix your careless movements, I should be able to do the same.”

Ben, naturally, denies all responsibility, but he has a feeling she will never let this go.  So he apologizes, and promises to make up for it by teaching her how to make a new lightsaber for herself when Chewie returns. 

The Wookie has promised to bring them kyber crystals. 

Ben watches Rey twist, whirl, and leap with her long staff, and he gets an idea.  “I think,” he says slowly, “I think we should try something a little different with your new saber.  What do you think about building a double-bladed lightsaber?”

_Not that you’re asking me, Ben, but I think it’s about time you asked her another kind of question_

_-_  

Ben is living a good life, one far more peaceful, beautiful, and complete than he could ever deserve or ask for.  He tries not to question his good fortune, and almost welcomes the days when he falls into a kind of darkness because it means his life is not too good to be true.  Because he definitely has those days, hours, and minutes.   They are terrible, filled with nightmares, sleeplessness, and a pervasive guilt that shadows him and causes him to flee into the forest or off toward the distant mountains so he does not darken one second of Rey’s life. 

Sometimes, Rey follows him.  Sometimes she does not.  Over time, he learns that she only follows him on his really dark days, the days when he questions why he is alive and not Han, or any of the people who fell to his lightsaber or TIE Silencer.  She always seems to know when to speak to him, to question or cajole or comfort him. 

He doesn’t know if it is because of her natural compassion or because of the Force bond they share, but she always, always knows the best ways to help him.

Rey is literally his angel, and he is utterly grateful for her. 

That is why it he feels so much guilt when she is not enough.

_People are great, kid, but don’t expect any one of them to be your sole friend and companion.  I don’t know about all other creatures, but humans at least usually need to have multiple friends, a small, trustworthy community.  And don’t take it from me, because I’ve always had trust issues, but ask your mom_

His mom is the problem.  Or rather, his mom’s absence is the problem.

He wants to face her, eye to eye, not through some twice-damned Snoke-shadowed Force vision that chokes his breath because he can’t tell if it is past, present, or future. 

In such visions, his mother is always alone, standing at the glass of some massive starship.  She lifts her chin, and Ben knows her eyes are dark like his and unlike his.  He has inherited her fierce anger by blood, has earned comparison to her weariness by a constant fight with the galaxy around him and in him, and has caused with his sins and lightsaber the abysmal grief that wracks her soul.

Ben loves his mom, knows she loves him, or at least knows that he _should_ know that she loves him.  But as Rey says, Snoke messed him up so much that something seems to be wrong with his brain, and it keeps telling him that his mom hates him, despises his very breath, and it makes sense because he killed the love of her life.  And a lot of other people.  And confusion and Snoke’s manipulation don’t explain it all away, because he still made choices.  And sure his mom helped rescue him from the grasp of the Resistance, but he still hasn’t seen her.

Still won’t see her, because she is the leader of the Resistance, is set to return to her seat in the Senate of the New Republic, and he couldn’t expect her to sacrifice a few days to visit him just because he missed her.  He lost the right to miss her years ago.

And what if someone were to find out, and public opinion were to turn against her?  The Princess General Leia Organa Solo is much more important to the galaxy’s survival than to his own.

-

It is three months after Ben and Rey began to live in their secret home, and one day Rey finds Ben down by the stream, leaning over a large bucket and swirling some brown-ish red liquid.  The sun, half-way through its six-month cycle of summer heat, blazes down, and Ben isn’t wearing a shirt.

Head bent, hair pulled back from his face, Ben focuses his gaze on his work.  Rey does not alert him to her presence immediately, and Ben tentatively stretches a thought out, asking her what she is thinking.  Rey, however, is totally distracted, and does not seem to notice Ben’s question.  Nevertheless, a thought radiates from her mind, an observation she has made that she cannot move on from: Ben’s back muscles glisten with sweat, and Rey imagines his chest glistens as well. 

Ben senses Rey turning away, and calls to stop her, standing up from his bucket. 

Rey’s cheeks have blushed pink, and she is trying to stuff something in the folds of her light shirt.

“What are you doing?” Ben asks innocently. 

Rey, flustered, retorts with a singular lack of originality.  “What are _you_ doing?”

“Failing,” Ben says laconically.

Rey steps near, leans down to look at the bucket containing Ben’s mess.  Silently, he lifts the stick he was using to stir the rusty water, and shows her an oddly colored tunic.

Rey stares at the tunic.  “Are you trying to bleach that?”  She covers her mouth with one hand, and Ben is certain she is concealing a grin.

Torn between similar amusement and disgruntlement, Ben says, “Trying, and failing.”

Rey looks at him in puzzled delight.  Her hair is pulled back in the three buns she was wearing when they first met.  “Explain,” Rey says, as imperiously as one can sound when on the verge of uncontrollable laughter.

Ben shrugs.  He feels rather silly, but he would rather feel silly with Rey than completely solemn and put together with anybody else. 

“I thought about wearing white again,” he confesses at last.  “Sort of a sign of—whatever this is.  This thing you gave me.  A new start.”  

Oh Force, he is a fool.

He hurries to forestall any comments Rey might make. 

“I’m an idiot, I know.  I have no idea how to bleach something when I don’t actually have bleach in any form, and I don’t even really want to wear white, except on the hottest days, I suppose, because I feel much more comfortable in black.”

It’s a tumble, a jumble of sentences and he trips and stumbles and he really is the dumbest person in the galaxy and his dad is assuredly laughing up a storm because of course he would be watching this—and Rey starts to laugh. 

The sound is like the ringing of a water-filled crystal and suddenly Ben begins to laugh too.  When Rey finally finds breath to speak, her eyes are bright with tears, but she speaks lightly enough. 

“If you take up wearing white as a habit, it is your prerogative, but I am quite partial to your black attire, or, if the day is hot, the lack thereof.”

Ben glances up at Rey half-shocked, but she is desperately trying not to start laughing again, and as she speaks her voice keeps hitching from bubbling hysteria.  “And if you try to _whiten_ your _black_ tunics with the resources we have at hand, I shall have to return to Jakku, because clearly I’ll have better luck waiting for my birth family to come back to me than to see the day you use common sense!”

With that jab, Rey devolves into helpless laughter.  Ben stands there speechless and staring, partially because he feels slightly offended, but also because Rey just referred to her worthless parents as part of a joke, and Ben is so taken aback by this, so wildly pleased that she could mention them without sinking into depressive thoughts, that it is all he can do not draw her into a crushing hug.

_Ah just do it, kid_

Ben hugs Rey, and she hugs him back, and laughs into his sweaty chest the whole time.

-

It is evening when they are walking hand in hand back up the hill towards the edge of the forest, to their treehouse, and a familiar sound rumbles through the sky.  They glance up, and Ben’s heart lifts, which he would not have thought possible considering he already feels like he is floating among the clouds. 

But there is the ship, and there is Ben’s heart, and in his eagerness to see Chewie, he speeds up his pace, and when Rey begins to run, he runs with her, till they stand before _The Millenium Falcon._

The ramp lowers, and they hear Chewie’s triumphant growl, a happy hello, but Chewie is not the first creature who descends to the ground. 

Instead, the figure Ben sees is a good foot shorter than him, if not more, a woman in a dark blue dress suited for space flight, wearing an ornate ring on her left hand, and grey hair wound up in a stately braid. 

Ben’s breath catches, and his knees feel week, and if he moves at all it will be to fall to the ground, and he has no idea if he will remain speechless or will devolve into tears, and Rey will have to run her hands in circles on his back, and promise him that this is no dream.

Because there, there is Ben’s mother, the Princess of Alderaan, the General of the Resistance, Leia Organa Solo, daughter of Anakin Skywalker and Padme Naberrie, daughter of Bail and Breha Organa, sister of Luke Skywalker, wife of Han Solo. 

Ben can’t bear to look in his mother’s eyes, but across ten feet of green summer grass, Leia calls to him, a soft word, one word, the word he has been dying to hear from her lips for over a decade, the word that Snoke had denied him—his very name. 

“Ben.”

When Ben was old enough to understand, Leia had told him all about his namesake, the powerful, kind Jedi named Obi-wan Kenobi, her only hope, whom she had always known as Ben.

Ben Solo had been born the day the peace treaty between the Empire and the New Galactic Republic was signed, Ben had been the hope of the new generation, and Ben had utterly failed.

He did not, does not deserve the name.  That is what Ben thinks after the first second of elation. 

Nevertheless, he stumbles forward, and Leia steps to meet him, and though she is so small, and Ben so tall, she takes him in her arms, and he melts into her embrace like he is a twelve year old boy who hasn’t seen his mother in years.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Ben says, again and again.  He will never be able to say those words enough, they will never mean enough. 

He can’t look into his mother’s eyes, but finds himself on his knees, and he is burying his face into the blue of her dress, his cheek pressed against her womb. 

His mom clutches his shirt, rubs her fingers across his back, up his neck, and runs her fingers through his long black hair.  She tilts his head and kisses his brow, and Ben falls silent at last.

Leia holds his head gently in her hands. 

“Ben,” she says.  “I want you to know three things.  I love you, I love you more than anything in the galaxy.  I forgive you, I forgive you for everything, even and most especially for your father’s death.  And finally, I will never leave you again, unless you will it.”

Ben stares up at his mother.  “You can’t,” he says.  “You can’t stay with me.  The Republic needs you.” 

Leia raises an eyebrow, and Ben instantly remembers that no can win an argument with his mom, not an argument she cares about. 

“Ben,” Leia says.

(oh how he melts)

“Ben, I have lived all my life working for the safety and well-being of the galaxy.  There have been times where I fear I let my passion for this good work interfere with my other, even more important concern—the well-being of my son.”

Ben shakes his head, starts to protest, but his mom shakes her head, and Rey is whispering in his head, telling him to just listen.

Leia sighs, and Ben physically cannot stand to look at worn wrinkles on her face.  She is still utterly beautiful, it isn’t that, but he knows he helped put those wrinkles there, and he missed so many years he could have spent at his mom’s side.  He blinks hot tears away.

His mom is not finished.  She has something she is longing to tell him, to ask him.  Ben can feel her anxiety rising like a black tide, she is so worried.  And suddenly, though years ago he may have thought otherwise, he now has no desire to hear her ask for his forgiveness, because that would make it seem like her offenses against him have been anywhere near the depth of his offenses against her. 

He stops her before she gathers the courage to speak.  “Mom,” he says, and the word, so long unused, tastes precious on his tongue.  “Mom,” he repeats softly.  “I want to give you anything you ask for.  Anything, for the rest of my life, the rest of your life.”

Rey is crying, Ben doesn’t need a Force bond to hear her choked tears.

Ben is crying, he feels like his chest has been cleared out by water from his and Rey’s cold stream, and that now it is expanding with the cool night sky and the stars that he and Rey sit and gaze upon over and over again. 

And Leia is crying, but she is smiling down at Ben, and he can finally look into her eyes.  They are even more loving than he remembers, and he smiles, feeling blessed beyond belief.

“Mom,” he whispers, and Leia pulls him into a hug once more.

“I have only one favor to ask of you, Ben,” Leia says, and Ben knows what she is about to say, and he doesn’t know why but he isn’t nervous anymore, not at all.

“Please, Ben, answer your father.  He’s right behind you, and he says he’s been trying to talk to you for weeks, but you just won’t listen.”

Ben pulls his lips into his dad’s classic smirk.  “I was listening,” he says.  “I just hadn’t figured out what to say yet.” 

“And now you know?”

“Yes.” 

-

 _Nothing matters but this,_ Han says. _I love you_.

Ben gives the only answer he can.

“I know.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday, Maria!!! I hope you love this! (Also it isn't in the fic but let us be clear, Ben asks Rey to marry him probably like the next day and they live happily ever after and get to travel the galaxy and Chewie is godfather to their kids and Leia spends much time with them but also probably acts like an unofficial advisor to the New Republic or whatever it will be called at this point and she makes it very clear who killed Snoke and brought the First Order down and they're just going to have to deal with the fact that the ex-Kylo Ren is running around free and happy :D Also Finn, Rose, Poe, and Kaydel all become friends with Ben over the years, mostly because they all love Rey and you can't love Rey without loving Ben, and actually whatever he once did Ben is actually a very good man in his own right and sorry this is turning into a fanfic of my fanfic...)  
> Love you!


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